Abstract
The historical trajectory of Japan's aircraft development is the main theme of this book and the author examines it by using a transnational approach. Since in Japan many aviation-related materials and documents were lost, destroyed, discarded, or scattered at the end of World War II, it has been difficult to find new historical materials. Therefore, the available materials are limited to the remaining military documents, official histories based on these, or memoirs by military and civilian experts. Melzer succeeded to a large extent in supplementing the “missing link” by using documents from the countries such as France, Britain, Germany, and the United States.
One of the most important themes of the book is aviation technology transfer (we might as well call it “arms transfer”), and I would like to focus on this issue. What Melzer emphasizes throughout the book is that he sees Japan as having institutionally fostered a group of creative engineers rather than mere imitators. This is what Melzer calls “an organizational structure for sustained technological inventiveness.” This structure was formulated by the Japanese Army and Navy, the Navy Arsenals, aviation research institutes, the aircraft industry with the expertise that suppliers provided, and by the public who shared airmindedness.
The Japanese Army and Navy competed from the start in the modernization period, with the Army introducing technology from France and the Navy from Britain. Studying in Europe was one way to promote technology transfer, and many military personnel gathered information of aviation technology. Next, they enthusiastically invited air missions. Flight training and mock flights by the British and French aviation missions were widely reported by the newspaper media, which stimulated public airmindedness. Japanese people fervently supported the development of airplanes which connected national prestige and military nationalism. However, the French and British sources Melzer refers exposes those suppliers did not provide their empirical aircraft design know-how to put Japan in a dependent position.
In contrast, aviation technology transfer from Germany and the United States, suppliers of advanced civil airliners, provided scientific and efficient design and production know-how. Through licensing agreements with Rohrbach, Heinkel, Junkers, and Dornier, and by inviting engineers from them, Japan was able to convert their technology for civil airliners into military use and to accomplish independent aircraft designs by the mid-1930s. In addition, through private trading companies, the Japanese Navy acquired the latest aviation technology by contracting production licenses for Douglas airliners, engines from Curtiss-Wright and P&W, and the state-of-the-art propeller from Hamilton. While the relations between Japan and the USA deteriorated due to Japan's policy toward China, the Japanese Army and Navy developed mass production system for Japanese aviation industry by systematically and massively purchasing machine tools and aviation parts from the United States.
Multi-archival research Melzer adopted in this book reveals that Japan was not a one-sided recipient, but rather a selector of superior partners by comparing the Western countries in terms of aviation technology she needed. The Japanese Navy arsenal and aviation industry under contracts with the Army achieved indigenization of aircraft designs and domestic production beyond all expectations of the suppliers who wanted to place Japan as a subordinate position. As Melzer discusses, the suppliers had “prejudices” that prevented them from getting an accurate situation of the development of aviation technology in Japan, and they always regarded the Japanese aircraft industry as “imitators” or labeled it in terms of “backwardness”. On the other hand, the Japanese Navy built partnerships with academic experts and aviation and material companies and succeeded in establishing superior naval air power with aircraft carriers and carrier-based dive bombers for preemptive air strikes. After attack on Pearl Harbor, technology transfer was substantially closed, and submarines were used to transport materials for technology transfer between Germany and Japan. The climax of this book is the completion of jet and rocket fighters with the engineers’ struggle to cope with the military's unreasonable demands while being subjected to raw material shortages, hunger, and fierce aerial bombardment.
Melzer's remarkable achievement is to provide a comprehensive history of Japanese aviation development written in English. This book is based on the literature and primary sources available in Japan and on other sources in the related countries. Melzer describes in detail the changing policies and strategies of both the Army and Navy, espionage for Japan by the British, the diffusion of airmindedness with valuable color illustrations, photographs, and advertisement. He also focuses on the ironical result that the disarmament treaties in 1922 and 1930 expanded the Japanese Navy with its aircraft carrier strategy. However, he does not fully scrutinize the development of international civil aviation in the 1930s, nor the problem of the dual use character of aircrafts at that era. We can think of aviation as a field that was unlikely to become a target for disarmament due to its promising technology. Considering that the development of civil aviation during the Great Depression was a major reason why countries hesitated to restrict aviation technology in the Geneva disarmament conference. This is one precedent where advanced technology will not be disarmed. So civil aviation in the 1930s would not be overlooked politically, economically, militarily, or geopolitically. I would very much like to hear the ideas of Melzer, a former Lufthansa pilot, on this point.